Absolution
by haulred
Summary: Pushed by her own guilt, Hermione Granger is tasked to do the impossible when the Order falls and the Uprising seeks to take its place. War!fic.


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters in association. I'm not profiting, etc.

Summary: Pushed by her own guilt, Hermione Granger is tasked to do the impossible when the Order falls and the Uprising seeks to take its place. Warfic.

Warnings: Character death. Dark.

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Absolution

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July 20th

"It was an ambush!"

It wasn't until a few hours ago that she had known something was off. She had sensed it before she could put a name to it.

"Were there…causalities?" She asked, though by the look of him she knew the answer before his affirmation met her ears.

He was covered in mud, bristles of trees, and either his own blood or someone else's. She couldn't be sure of the latter until the healers checked him out. He wasn't wearing the smile that he usually did when he got back from a mission. Usually he had good news to bear, but by the scowl of his lips and how the down turn of his brows aged him, she knew that this wasn't like the other times.

Her mind was quickly putting together the jagged pieces of a puzzle.

"What was count?"

"Four."

Her vision blurred. They had lost before but never that many in a mission that wasn't supposed to involve combat. They had only been sent to town to get a few supplies.

"Who?"

"Mclaggen, Jordon, and Patil—both of them," His voice wavered for a moment."Angelina tried to disapparate out before..before we knew what was happening. There must have been an anti-disapparation jinx on the location. I'm not sure of her status. "

Her eyes scanned the parchment in her hand that detailed every move that they were supposed to make during their trip to town. Though she tried to poke holes in what should have been a simple outing, she found nothing that would have explained the day's events.

"Four down..but we sent in seven," She whispered as the jagged pieces of the puzzle snapped together. "Was he captured?"

A bitter laugh. "No, he wasn't captured."

July 23rd

"Where would we be if we hadn't made that mistake?"

She thought he laughed. "Which one?"

"Take your pick. Any of the obvious ones or the ones we haven't realized yet."

He sat in silence as he studied her face for a moment. She hated when he did that. It was so familiar.

"No, love. I think of all the moments we have right now that will put our mistakes to rest," He said earnestly. "Regret makes you timid and that makes you predictable. We don't have that luxury at the present moment."

July 25nd

There were flashes of light; followed by glimpses of familiar faces that were scrunched into hard lines and shapes. They called out to her words that she couldn't hear over the hammering of her own heart, as it threatened to burst with every beat.

Her shoes were heavy from the wet mud of the battleground, though not heavier than her chest as her brown eyes saw an unmoving body in the distance, red hair covering the face. It could have been any of them, she thought to herself, but she knew which one. She knew because she had run her fingers through that hair so often that it had been committed to memory long ago.

She knew.

Guilt bubbled deep inside of her stomach, as it had done countless times in the last few days. The rational part of her was screaming so loudly inside of her skull that she put her stained fingers to her lips to make sure that they weren't moving in unison.

This was not supposed to be happening. It was not rational.

They had planned everything down to the last miniscule detail. She had demanded it to be so. She, as they all said, was the rational head of the Order. They didn't make a move unless she had poured over the details with a fine toothcomb with Moody.

It made sense to all them. After all, she was the brightest witch of her generation, and as talented as any in ranks at the Order. Her talent was just different than the others.

She didn't excel at battles. She was rational, but wasn't devoid of emotions. Though those they fought against were fighting them for the most insidious of reasons, she couldn't bring herself to take another life. The two words of the unforgivable curse got clogged in her throat even when she knew killing them was a means to an end. Instead of battlegrounds and missions, she kept her head in books and her hands clean. It was just logical.

However, as she was learning, nothing was rational about war. There were muck ups, misinformation, emotions, and, she laughed bitterly at this one, turncoats.

Her legs felt like they might collapse under her weight but she pressed on. She counted the bodies of her friends as she walked past them, mumbling apologies and eulogies as she went. She counted six of them before she finally reached him.

Her shaking hands found his face and she muttered assurances. His eyes locked onto hers. They were not full of the anger or hate that she had been expecting. Like she had wanted.

He reached a hand up to her forearm, hanging on like it was his anchor that kept him steady.

Her skin burned.

Not from the heat of his fingers, but from the shame of it all. "Hermione. I can't bear it!"

She shook her head and though she had told herself before that it was the rain that covered her cheeks, she couldn't deny its actuality any longer. It was the remnants of what she felt. Pain. Sorrow. Guilt.

"Don't," She said accusingly. "Don't task me with this."

"No Weasley has died begging in this war," He rasped, still holding onto her shaking arm. "Don't make me into the first."

He spoke more but she couldn't hear him over her own words that filled her head. She looked over his body. She knew what curses he had been hit with because she had categorized every known spell that could be used in war last November.

His shaking.

The blue spots in his eyes.

His bent fingers.

His protruding belly.

His singed skin.

The awkward angle of his neck.

She knew.

He wasn't going to make it but a few hours. She could make him comfortable, whisper memories into his ears, and hold him as they both wept. She could even comfort him as the singeing in his skin spread to other parts of his body as the spell continued to burn away at his—

"Please."

It sounded so childlike. It reminded her of her own voice as she begged her parents for more sweets in the hot summer days as a child. Or all the times she said it with a roll of the eyes to him when he had said something ridiculous. Or—

"' 'Mione, _please_."

She looked down at him, eyes filled with the tears that she felt weak for allowing to fall. She loved him, she thought to herself now. Maybe not in the way that she felt obligated to, but she loved him all the same. She thought to tell him this because she wasn't sure if he knew. She wasn't sure if she had ever bothered to tell him.

But now, as she placed his head gingerly on the ground, she didn't know if those words deserved to come from her lips.

Not now.

Not before.

And definitely not after all that she had done.

"I'm so sorry."

July 29th

She wasn't sure how many days had passed. It only felt like a few hours, but from the worried expressions of the brave few who came into her room baring food, as well as smiles painted on with the intention of coaxing her from her self imposed shell, she knew that it must have been longer than that.

The dull pain gnawed at her every day until she fell asleep. She tried to sleep as much as she could.

September 3rd

The war had been declared over by every major prophet in the Wizarding World. The victors stood proudly in front of the cameras, showing off perfect smiles as they hugged the women and children they had left at home to fight the good fight, as they called it. Her teeth gnawed away at her battered bottom lip as her eyes scanned the article that lay in her lap.

How fickle the Wizarding World was, she thought. They had all stood behind Harry Potter and the Order but declared them nothing more than blood traitors and mudbloods bent on corruption when they fell. It was for their own well being, she knew, but couldn't shake the feeling of betrayal.

The cot she sat upon dipped at the addition of more weight.

The words that reached her ears were full of optimism, hope and pledges. The Hermione Granger from the beginning of the war would have loved nothing more than to hear them, to agree with them wholeheartedly. Merlin, she might have proposed a cheer at such words a year ago. Now she sat stone faced, eyes focused on the wall in front of her.

"—with a plan and a few more men!"

The last few weeks Hermione had withdrew into herself. The guilt of her actions and inactions sent her into a state that worried the remaining members of the Order.

She had refused to eat. She couldn't, or wouldn't, sleep. Her conversations with others were short, concise, and devoid of anything more than what was necessary for the moment.

No one knew what to say because they weren't used to dealing with these situations. Hermione had always done the comforting. It was she who spoke reassurances over cold dinners to members who had become hardened by what they had seen, or, worst of all, done.

"—We can't hide forever. They've kept a count of the bodies. We aren't presumed dead anymore, we are considered fugitives of justice!" Bitter words were met with a bitter laugh. "Hell, they think just because they don't have Ron's—"

She was on her feet before she realized it. "Don't!" was all she said. "Don't speak his name to me of all people!"

Every one around them stopped and looked. She felt like a train wreck and knew that she looked like one. She was shaking, stuttering, letting loose profanities that she had learned from the very man she had put down.

She was out of control-but it felt good. It felt like the weight of the world was coming off of her shoulders with every broken object. With every whip of her untamed hair. With every-

Strong hands grabbed her shoulders as she shook. The body took the blows that she dealt out without moving an inch. Her head was pushed into the crook of its shoulder, muffling the self-hate that she spewed.

She looked up and was met with a pair of understanding blue eyes.

"Ronald." She muttered reaching out fingers to touch his familiar freckled skin.

The world around her quieted.

"No, love, Charlie." He spoke it like an apology.

An apology she would have heard if she hadn't resigned to the familiar darkness that had begun to overtake her as she fell into exhaustion.

September 19th

When she entered the room they all quieted. There were blueprints and mission plans scattered across the same table that she had blown her birthday candles out on a few hours ago. She expected their faces to show the guilt that she wanted them to feel, but they didn't—they all look relieved. It was as if a big secret had finally been revealed and they no longer had to meet under the shadows of secrecy.

She didn't know that her feet had begun to edge her out of the room before a voice reached her ears. "Sit, Hermione. _Stay_."

In moments she was in front of the table. Hands grabbing parchment, eyes looking over them; absorbing all of the words and playing out their actions in her head.

She breathed in deeply and shook her head. "No."

"No…what?"

Her hand found the cold oak as she slammed it down on the table.

"This isn't right. You could all die! For what? A half though out plan?" She spat out

"Hermione."

She shook the parchment in her hands, "Do you understand what's at risk here? Your lives! If you do this it's your bloody lives! Do you want me to bury all of you?"

Another voice began to plead with her until she, again, cut it off.

"We are not an army! We are a bunch of displaced children! We are nothing more than causalities of a war that none of us started…That none of us wanted," She yelled, feeling the familiar stinging of her eyes. "We are not anyone's heroes anymore so it's about bloody time we stop marching off to our deaths like we are. If we die for them they wont commemorate _us_, they'll congratulate _them_."

By their silence she thought to continue on.

They were dumb. They were stupid. They were reckless. They thought not of others, only of themselves. She wanted to tell them this with all of the profanities and criticisms she could think of.

"We aren't in a time of war anymore! Why can't you get on with your—"

"Get on with our WHAT, Hermione?" Penelope roared, standing up and placing both her hands on the table as if she were bracing herself. "Our LIVES? Do we have those anymore? We sleep, eat, and shit in a run down shack in the middle of bloody nowhere!"

Hermione looked at the woman in front of her. The war had changed all of them, but it might have changed Penelope the most. She was no longer the quiet girl that Hermione had known, albeit by acquaintance, at Hogwarts.

"You want us to be scared, Hermione? Should we talk in our sleep and whisper the names of all the people we've done wrong by like you? Would that make us the heroes worthy of commemoration in your book?"

It was like something in her snapped, though how normal that was for her now. She wasn't sure that she had actually hit the blonde in front of her until hands grabbed her shoulder and pushed her backwards.

She stumbled on her feet, falling on her backside on the unforgiving floor. She thought to stand up and launch an attack of hands, teeth, and whatever else she could manage, but the look Charlie gave her pinned her to the ground. His eyes were saying everything that he could manage to say to her verbally and she hated it. She hated him. She hated them.

"You want another round, Granger?" Penelope taunted, holding a palm to her reddened cheek. "Tell me, Hermione, would it make you feel better?"

The brown haired witched pushed herself up from the floor, knocking away Charlie's hands and avoiding the gaze of the others in the room.

"Get some ice on that cheek, Penelope. I'd hate for it to bruise."

SEPTEMBER 25th

Their hushed voices played in her head before she had fully woke from her sleep. She carefully pushed herself from bed and tiptoed to her door and down the darkened hallway.

She listened for a while, heart beating out of her chest as the conversation turned to her. She figured that this was nothing new. It was too often that she would round a corner and a thick silence would fall on everyone.

For days after Ron had died none of them dared to look at her, but she could hear their words as they seeped through the walls and into her bedroom. She'd press a pillow to her head, wanting nothing to do with their thoughts as her own mind was working overtime piecing together its own.

"Penny-"

Charlie's voice.

Somewhere in the piles of days that had turned into months, he had become her protector. Shielding her from the others and, most of all, herself. His arms were the ones that would encircle her when she cried and his hands would be the ones that would hold her in place when she thrashed and shook from the memories that ate at her. The regret that had been holding her hostage.

"No, Charles. No. I'm so tired of this all. We let her walk around with her head so far up her arse that she can't even sit. We let her lecture us like we're first years who've been naughty!" She inhaled deeply, shrugging off the arm of the man who stood to her right. "She's given up and that's bloody well and good for her, but then she wants to talk about moving on? I would rather lay down my life than be some coward hidden away in the country side while half-bloods and muggles continue to be locked up or worse!"

Everything stilled.

For the second time in as many months Hermione whispered, "Don't task me with this."

All eyes in the room were suddenly on her and she shrunk at the heat of their eyes.

"Don't task us with your guilt. You want forgiveness, Granger? You want an absolution? _Fuck. You._ You need to right your wrongs for yourself. You will forever be drowning in your own head if you don't."

As if anything could absolve her wrongs. As if the blood would ever be washed from her hands.

"You're all going by that plan?" Hermione asked, her voice deceptively even. "You want to do this?"

"Yes," It was Ginny who spoke this time. "We lost the war and no one knows better than me the pain that that comes with that. To make it worse, it will go down in the books that the Order was nothing more than a bunch of criminals."

"And you want to fight for that?" She asked unbelievingly. " They made us criminals and now we fight for them? _Again_?"

"No. Because we aren't the Order anymore. We aren't what they turned us into. We are not criminals. We are _not_ fugitives. We are not the people who hide in shadows because we are too bloody scared to be seen in the light!"

She was stunned for a moment. The Order was everything they had all stood for, bled for, died for.

"Then what are we?"

"We are the uprising," She answered "Our numbers may be down but they have more of a chance of killing me than they do of ever seeing me wave a little white flag in surrender."

She looked at each of their faces and could see they all agreed. She could stand there for the next few hours and explain to them all of the reasons they were going off to their deaths until she was blue in the face, but she knew they wouldn't listen and wasn't sure she wanted them too.

"We need you." His voice said. "Our plans are shit without you. You know the way he thinks and what he'll do."

At this she sat down in a chair.

"If I knew that do you think we would even be in this situation?" She asked, not bothering to mask the sadness in her voice. "Do you think I would have let this all happen?'

"No, but you're seeing clearly now, we all are. We looked past the clues and doubts because we were desperate." Charlie admitted. "We're not desperate anymore."

She shook her head as a disbelieving laugh erupted from her lips. "Aren't we?"

He laughed too, but it seemed to be genuine. It had been weeks since she last heard anything like it. "No, we're not desperate anymore. Now we're just bloody angry."

September 29th

They had been planning for the last few days. She spent most of her waking moments going over strategies and discussing potential first steps. None of them could agree on the best first move for their cause, though they could all agreed that they needed to make one immediately.

"An uprising is like watching a master moving his piece on a chess board. We need to act in finesse. We have to strike the ministry in the right places at the right time. If we go full force in just one angle, they'll shut us down in a fortnight."

"We're stronger together. If we split up we're through!" Ginny reasoned looking at Charlie for assistance as Penelope continued to shoot down her ideas.

Charlie stood and pointed at two different areas on the parchment. It wasn't a map; it was different ideas they had scrawled down hastily the night before.

"No, exactly the opposite. If we keep moving together we'll become predictable. " He said, fingers jabbing at the parchment. "If we want this to work we need to move in the most unpredictable of ways. We need to do everything they think we are going to do in a way they wouldn't think we would."

There was Charlie and his talk of the downfall of predictability. Throughout the war he had spoken about it more times than she could remember. It would be their downfall, he had said a few months ago. He had turned out to be right and she wasn't sure she could go against his instincts again. Even if, like Ginny, she believed they should stay together.

Though, unlike Ginny, she wondered if it was less because she disagreed with their ideas or because she was scared of being left alone with her own mind.

"Hermione?"

Her name shook her out of her own thoughts. By the looks on their faces, she imagined they wanted her to put her own input in.

"We should split." She found herself saying. "We need to cover more arenas and its impossible to do if we all stay put here together. Some of us need to go underground and drum up support or at least plant doubt in those who aren't fully on board with the new ministry."

"I'm on board with that." Charlie grinned. "Who could say no to this face?"

"Most people, which is why I'll do the drumming of support." Penelope laughed. "You Weasely's and your red hair are just too bloody noticeable to even try to be underground. I'll take Brown and Thomas. We'll stick to different Wizarding cities."

Ginny nodded in agreement. "Okay, we'll figure out another angle for the rest of us."

"If we're going to do this we're going to need support, but we're also going to need something else."

All eyes in the room turned to the blonde at their right. She looked timid for a second, as if what she was about to say was going to offend everyone in the room.

"We need to do to them what they did to us. You want unpredictability here it is: One of us," She said, meeting the eyes of everyone at the table, though they bore into Hermione's the longest. "-Is going to need to go inside and find out all of their strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between so we can exploit them. Change them. Hell, defeat them."

Hermione ran cold. Pain. Sorrow. Guilt. It was there again as if it had never left.

"Penny." Charlie's voice.

"You want to make it right? Here you go. This uprising needs to happen from the inside out and you, Hermione, are the only one with claws in someone in power." She said. "Have you seen the prophets? They are looking for you. The rest of us? If we showed up they'd have us killed on the spot _if_ they're having a good day. You? They'd keep you alive and untouched until they could hand you off. And who exactly do you think they'll hand you off to?"

"_Penelope_." Hermione thought it might be Lavenders voice, but it might have been her own.

A hand was waved in the air as if to dismiss the voices that kept interrupting. "They're expecting you. It's so obvious that its—"

"Insane." Hermione finished for her.

"Unpredictable." Penelope revised. "We are all putting our lives on the line for this. Some of us have more to prove than others."

Hermione felt the familiar bubbling sensation deep in her gut. For a moment, she thought it might just be the regret eating away at her like acid at the lining of her stomach. It wasn't until she felt the bile rising in her throat that she ran to the kitchen sink, vomiting the breakfast that she had just had.

"I need time to think." She said quietly.

She turned the water on and watched as it began to make slow circles and empty down the drain.

"I just need time to think." She repeated, though this time she said it so quietly it was almost as if she was saying it to herself.

September 31st

An admission slipped past her parted lips before she could think twice.

"I don't know who I am anymore."

It was the truth, though she had meant to keep it hidden. There was something about him that made her feel like she could let her walls down, if only for a brief moment.

He gave her a meaningful look before the corners of his lips tugged upwards in a smile. "I've heard you're the brightest witch of your age," He said, his voice holding a teasing tone. "But you're far more than that, Hermione. You're something fierce."

She smiled as she swirled her spoon in her lukewarm soup. "Penelope is fierce…. I'm…I'm just me..but less than me. This war, our choices, _my_ choices..they've all changed me."

"Listen, when I first met you I couldn't see your face 'cause of all that hair you have on your head," He laughed now, a deep one that seemed to bounce off the walls. "Even so, you gave me the impression that you were a lot more fire than you look. You've got it locked up inside you now and I reckon because of all that's happened. When you unlock it, you'll put Clearwater to shame."

Hermione breathed in deeply. Her mind was a mess of tangles that had to do with everything but nothing at all.

"Charlie, should I go?" She asked hurriedly

They sat in silence for a moment both staring into what was now empty bowls.

She had been thinking about what Penelope had said for the last few days. Hermione was many things, but she no fool. She knew that Penelope was using her guilt to push her into going with her plan.

If she was caught, she was done for. There was no way they'd let her live. But could this be a way to absolve her of her guilt, she wondered. Would it ease the nightmares that plagued her sleep or push away the dreadful scenes that danced across the backs of her eyelids? If she succeeded, she told herself, she might finally find absolution.

"You know how I just said you were fire?" He asked, watching as her head bobbed up and down. "Maybe it's about time you showed the world your flames."

October 1st

They were talking around her again; they stopped really talking _to_ her long ago. There were some sounds of disagreement from those around her but she could tell that they weren't putting up much of a fight. Penelope was right; they needed someone on the inside.

"I'll go," She announced in the middle of one of Penelope's speeches. "But…I have one condition."

A/N:

This is my very first fanfiction. It's completely unBeta'd, which means you probably spent half of it cringing from my utter abuse of the conventions of grammar :p I apologize. Let me know if this is something you'd like to be continued!


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